


What Kind Of Man

by ashamedbliss



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Angst, Apocalypse, Dark!Merlin, Death, M/M, Murder, Reincarnation, Violence, badass!Merlin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-18
Updated: 2015-03-18
Packaged: 2018-03-18 12:15:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3569321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashamedbliss/pseuds/ashamedbliss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Merlin continues living after Arthur's death, and decides to master death himself</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Kind Of Man

**Author's Note:**

> title from Florence + the Machine song of the same name. just a short little thing I wrote (and promptly forgot about) then only just remembered. toying with making this a series? feedback welcome!

_Take heart, for when Albion’s need is greatest, Arthur will rise again_.

Merlin took his heart and buried it somewhere he would never find it again, the moment that Arthur drew his final breath. The dragon’s words held no warmth or comfort like Arthur’s easy laughter did, used to, once upon a time.

He became a fairytale, eventually. Merlin scoffed at the thought. His King, reduced to crude paintings and mediums that wouldn’t be invented for centuries.

Merlin kept a young appearance, because for the majority of his lifespan being old would’ve attracted unwanted attention: peasants like him died young

_just like Arthur_

and attention was the last thing he wanted. His magic boiled under his skin at first when he restrained it, used it once a year at most, but eventually it turned into a dull ache, a partner to the crater where his heart once was.

He tried to move on, and the boy deserves credit for how hard he tried. Men, women, lords, ladies, all of them fought for his favour or his warmth at night time, but they could never satisfy him, and when one errant duke presumed to take Merlin entirely, his long-bound magic lashed out, killing him.

He was the first man Merlin killed since Arthur’s death, but he wasn’t the last.

Merlin dragged himself through a thousand years, often as a soldier, because Albion always seemed to be at war, under her many names and rulers. He’d eventually taken up the broadsword, trained at it, became fitter, because every swing of the metal reminded him of Arthur. The callouses on his palms brought back memories of Arthur’s rough hands shoving at him, or even just at rest, the power beneath that tanned skin.

The broadsword, the bow, the sabre. That one took Merlin longer to practice, more deaths to fake when he took otherwise fatal blows, because fighting with a sword was difficult enough, let alone whilst on horseback. It gave him the biggest thrill though; to go charging into enemy lines, slashing at everyone in reach and not caring in the slightest if he took any damage.

It was all material, now.

Merlin found himself saddened when gunpowder weapons slowly began to replace swords, but he held onto the bitter end. It was at Rorke’s Drift serving as a redcoat when he realised that this would be the last lifetime in which he would be astride a horse

_always nicknamed Hengroen_

as he rode into Hell, screaming, fury in his eyes because it was the only thing he felt now. One more death would be one more life, eventually.

The Great War didn’t bring him the same pleasure that Death had brought him in the past. Had he finally become immune to her presence, after a millenium of slaughter? It was the only tether that held Arthur to him still, the only thing he still had hope for

_when Albion’s need is greatest_

because what could be worse than thousands of men slaughtered on a single summer’s day? The crown itself was in turmoil and still, Arthur was nowhere to be found.

The interwar years were Merlin’s darkest, darker than those between Arthur’s passing and Merlin picking up the broadsword for the first time, once the population of Camelot had renewed itself and his name was but a whisper in the streets. Now, in a crumbling Albion

_he forgot to check himself once, and the butcher stared at him_

he drank during the day, plotting his own demise. He’s tired of killing people now. He’d thought about it way back when, when he still believed in his gods, still feared what judgement they would pass on him if he took his own life. A millenium is a long time, and when he discarded those gods he replaced them with only one.

But his god was cruel, and suicide would not be his end this time.

When Albion declared she was going to war once more, only twenty years after the end of the last one, Merlin’s elderly neighbour wept. “Martin, what will we do?” she sobbed, but Merlin only smiled.

“We’ll go to war.”

Because one more corpse is one more attempt at life, one more try at resetting the balance in the world. Merlin fights down the nausea as he clutches his rifle; he’s not nervous, of course he isn’t, but he’s never been good with boats. The door drops and he pours onto the beach, clambering over his comrades as he takes one, two, three bullets, and it’s the most alive he’s felt in decades.

Out of everything he’s experienced in his life, the advent of technology confuses him, because it’s too much progression much too quickly. His magic, now just dust in his veins, jumps to life the first time he uses the internet, as if it’s searching for something beyond the blinking of the cursor on the screen. He feels it creeping, snaking outwards, searching, tugging.

He doesn’t let the hope grow in his chest this time. He may be immortal, but if that hope goes unfed once more, he’s sure his soul will starve.

But the hope grows when he feels his magic begin to revive itself without his permission. This incarnation of Merlin, the seven hundredth and something, this one becomes happier, looks healthier despite having taken an office job in this lifetime, the military now too tightly controlled for him to simply slide into the ranks of. This version wears glasses with clear lenses, and for once he’s chosen to stick with the name Merlin, just because he hasn’t heard it spoken in so long.

Happier, he finds himself attracting attention, and he welcomes it. He makes friends, the first since he held a greying Gwen in his arms and told her he was sorry as she quietly slipped away. This Merlin goes for drinks with them, tells them a story entwined with a glamour about his past, enjoys the feel of a pat on the back or a strong hug from his female friends.

The world is modern, peaceful. There are no campaigns he can go join where people are slaughtered mercilessly; apparently now war has rules and laws. Arthur would scoff at that, and the thought makes Merlin smile for a second, before he swallows it back down.

He almost forgets.

_almost_

It begins in the papers. An outbreak of a virus in western Africa, nothing to be worried about unless you’re there. But it spreads, silently at first but then loudly, all over the news, Albion on red alert and the borders shut down.

But still, it spreads.

Merlin watches looters in pharmacies, in supermarkets, in corner shops, trying to find something, anything. He holds the hand of Laura, his closest friend in this life, as she draws her last breath

_you’ve done this too many times_

and he shouts after the hooligans that stabbed her in the first place, mugging her for the measly five pounds she had in her purse. His magic can’t save her now, can’t play with destiny.

Merlin cries himself to sleep that night, and then the next morning, he drags Excalibur from where it lies in the cupboard, wrapped in an old woollen blanket. He walks down the middle of the deserted high street, cars burning around him, the tip of Arthur’s sword shrieking against the tarmac as he drags it behind him, too weary now to hold it properly. He recognises the muggers in their black hoodies, crowding in on an elderly lady who had dared leave her house.

The first death is clean, his head separating from his body with one blow. Merlin grins; he hasn’t done this in so long. The elderly woman screams but he doesn’t care as he quickly rounds onto the second, and by the time the third has his switchblade out of his pocket, he’s grasping at the sword now thrust through his chest.

The old lady stares at him blankly. “You didn’t have to kill them like that.”

Merlin wipes Excalibur on his trouser leg, the blood seeping into his dark jeans. “It was that or the virus. I did them a mercy.”

He walks away before she can ask the question.

The government collapses the next day, the police forces joining in with the open rebellion. Merlin stopped hoping for Arthur to come back weeks ago, now, and chose a new god to worship: Death. He watches the virus under the guise of being a nurse, unable to save people even with his magic.

He’d never been good at saving a life, only at ending it.

The news stops being broadcast as the country turns to chaos and as the population dies, whichever comes first. Merlin quietly wonders to himself if he’ll have to help repopulate Albion after this, somehow, and the thought makes his gut churn.

_knock knock_

It’s three in the morning, and someone is knocking at his door. Merlin ignores it, until the hinges are forced in and his dingy flat is suddenly full of footsteps, echoing everywhere. He makes it out of the window onto the flat roof below it, jumping and rolling onto the communal lawn before running at full pelt. He remembers Excalibur, and turns to return to her but changes his mind when a burly man begins charging him. They’ve reunited enough over the years, she’ll find her own way back to him.

Merlin ducks the charge and makes it out of the alleyways onto the high street again, a fire blazing in a nearby shop front. He knows why he’s being chased; he’s been here too long, been healthy too long even though he’s scrawny nowadays, not as broad as when he used to fight broadsword every day. He’s blindsided in the middle of the road, knocked down and winded on the tarmac, surrounded.

“Fucking kill me,” he chokes, spitting blood onto the pavement. “I dare you.”

Merlin blinks up at them, their vacant expressions.

“Do it!”

One by one, his assailants fall to the floor, with only one shadowy figure above him, backlit by the fire. The stranger extends his hand and Merlin, clad only in the tracksuit bottoms he sleeps in, allows himself to be pulled to his feet, magic flaring so suddenly under his skin that he stumbles.

“It looks like I came back just in time.”

Merlin forgets to breathe as that voice sinks into his bones, into his very soul, his magic now roaring in his veins as the dragon had once roared at him, as Arthur had once roared in battle. Merlin grips the stranger’s jaw sharply, twisting it towards the light, watching the flames dance in blue eyes. “No.”

“I’m back,” the man says between Merlin’s thumb and fingers, and Merlin steps back, dropping his hand to look at him, his King, his God, the one who took his heart.

_need is greatest_

Merlin slaps him.

“Where the _fuck_ have you been?” Merlin shouts, because it isn’t 3am now, it’s the middle of the forest where Arthur died and there’s no one around for miles. “One millenium. One _fucking_ millenium and you turn up now?!” he says, shoving at Arthur’s chest, taking comfort in how uncomfortable Arthur looks, bewildered, a deer in the headlights. “ _Now_?! There were _two world wars_ and you didn’t show up! You cunt, you fucking cunt, you _liar_ ,” Merlin says, shoving and pushing against Arthur until Arthur finally grips Merlin’s flailing wrists, holding them against his chest as Merlin sobs once, twice, and then it’s all over. His knees give way but Arthur catches him, as he should’ve every time he’s fallen since Arthur died.

Seconds, minutes, hours later, Merlin says “don’t _ever_ leave me again.” Exhausted, defeated, finally ready to close his eyes for good.

“Never,” Arthur says, Merlin in his arms, and Merlin can finally rest.

 


End file.
